Corporate bookmakers have admitted their aggressive advertising campaigns are resulting in a backlash from the general public, as their spending on sports and horse racing promotions has grown to about $175 million a year.

The chief executive of the biggest corporate or online bookmaker, Sportsbet, said the industry needed to self-regulate. “Society is rejecting the volume of the advertising and the invasive nature of the advertising, particularly in-play odds being read by commentators. You have to respond to that,” Cormac Barry told the Australian Racing Conference in Melbourne on Thursday.

He said the recently formed Australian Wagering Council was working with advertising authorities to tone down the advertising, which has exploded in recent years with particular focus on sports such as the big football codes.

The bookmakers hit out at the horse-racing industry, with which they often have an adversarial relationship, saying the increased spending on sports betting advertising was at the expense of putting more money into racing.

Racing depends heavily on income from wagering, primarily from the TAB but increasingly from the bookmakers, to fund the industry.

“Look at the $50 million deal that [bookmaker] Tom Waterhouse recently signed with the NRL,” Mr Barry said. “That’s $50 million that could have gone to racing.”

Betfair Australasia chief executive Giles Thompson said the bookmakers should be allowed to offer more sponsorship to race courses and events.

Betstar chief executive Alan Eskander criticised the decision of horse racing industry-owned broadcaster ThoroughbredVision to shut out the bookmakers from appearing on the channel, describing it as a form of protectionism.

However, Racing NSW chief executive Peter V’Landys hit back, saying the bookmakers were targeting the “mug punters”, who provided the bookmakers with a 20 per cent profit margin, and exotic sports betting, which also had high margins, instead of racing.

He called on the bookmakers to increase the percentage of their winnings that was returned to racing. He said that, even after his organisation took successful High Court action last year and gained $100 million from a switch to charging fees on betting turnover rather than from revenue or gross profits, bookmakers returned half as much to racing as the TAB did.

David Attenborough, the chief executive of Tabcorp, which owns the TAB, said that if corporate bookmakers’ reach in racing came at the expense of the TAB, the amount of funding, and therefore prizemoney, into racing would decrease.

He pointed to the controversy over a media boycott of photo coverage for Friday’s cricket test against India and the row between media and rugby authorities at the 2011 World Cup.

“It is important not to alienate sections of the media by allowing clubs to impose total control over the manner in which images are used or interviews accessed,” he warned.

“Of course you must realise the value of your brands and protect your rights but in achieving this I believe it is much better for the media and racing to work together as partners. Using accreditation to impose unwieldy conditions and erect barriers to coverage is in my view counterproductive for everyone,” Mr Williams told the conference.

“I have seen it happen many times: across many different sports in a well-meaning but over-zealous fashion, sports bodies impose so many restrictions it soaks up goodwill amongst editors, reporters, photographers and videographers and ultimately, inevitably, backfires,” he said.